Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

thedrive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 50 posts

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#21

Post by slg »

rgrove wrote: post #6

The article claims Tesla is incorrect when they say that "the average ICE vehicle gets around 22 MPG", and counters with EPA stats showing that the average fuel economy of all vehicles in the US is 24.9 MPG. But these aren't the same thing. The set "all vehicles in the US" contains both ICE vehicles _and_ hybrid/battery-powered EVs. But Tesla is explicitly only talking about ICE vehicles, and Tesla doesn't specifical…

>but The Drive's counter-argument makes an apples vs. oranges comparison.

I will go one step further, The Drive's number is just straight dishonest. It lists that number as "the average fuel economy of all vehicles in the US hit 24.9 MPG in 2017". If you click through to the EPA report it list that 24.9 number as for "all new vehicles". It also says the number was 23.6 in 2012. The average car on the road is roughly 10 years old so that 23.6 number is still too modern to apply to "all vehicles in the US". So if you subtract non-ICE vehicles and factor in that MPG has been improving, the 22 MPG number from the original report seems perfectly reasonable.

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#22

Post by dominotw »

robertAngst wrote: post #13
bearcobra wrote: post #4

I really like Telsa's mission, but stuff like this is why they get a bad rap. I don't understand why they try to oversell everything. You've got a good product and are making a positive impact, don't squander it by making claims that can't be backed up.

> You've got a good product They have a product their buyers like, but the car doesnt have buttons or a center console. "Good" is in the eye of the beholder. Tesla has a weird situation that despite a product that breaks often and doesn't have niceties, their customers have a high satisfaction.

Breaks often?

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#23

Post by m463 »

robertAngst wrote: post #13
bearcobra wrote: post #4

I really like Telsa's mission, but stuff like this is why they get a bad rap. I don't understand why they try to oversell everything. You've got a good product and are making a positive impact, don't squander it by making claims that can't be backed up.

> You've got a good product They have a product their buyers like, but the car doesnt have buttons or a center console. "Good" is in the eye of the beholder. Tesla has a weird situation that despite a product that breaks often and doesn't have niceties, their customers have a high satisfaction.

> They have a product their buyers like, but the car doesnt have buttons or a center console.

You're not the target market. Really it's for people who don't have money for a model s/x who don't care about touchscreens and want to control the car from an app.

(fwiw: I'm not the market either, I want a dashboard)

What's kind of interesting is looking at older model S cars and searching back for what the UI looked like in the early years vs what it looks like now. Looks loads more modern now. These folks have upgraded their cars like their iphones throughout the years. The "niceties" are software and have just appeared over time.

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#24

Post by mr_toad »

SECProto wrote: post #5

> Fact Checking Tesla's "Impact Report" > It's no surprise that the electric automaker is having a positive environmental impact, so why does it need to exaggerate the good and gloss over the bad? I have a similar view of this article as this article has of Tesla: Why does it need to exaggerate the bad and gloss over the good? The only hard number it criticizes is the number Tesla used for the average mileage of the…

> Why does it need to exaggerate the bad and gloss over the good?

Car enthusiasts & journalists have a storied history of being biased against electric and/or self-driving vehicles.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/dec/24/jeremy-clarkso...

https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#25

Post by Robotbeat »

bearcobra wrote: post #4

I really like Telsa's mission, but stuff like this is why they get a bad rap. I don't understand why they try to oversell everything. You've got a good product and are making a positive impact, don't squander it by making claims that can't be backed up.

Name a single car maker that doesn't use paid marketing, which always oversells itself.

...and which claims can't be backed up? If you look at average existing ICE vehicle mpg (not counting hybrids and electrics), Tesla used the correct numbers.

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#26

Post by 7e »

Tesla's report does not include the damage it does to the world by selling carbon credits it earns to polluters, cheaply—thereby enabling them to pollute more and defer cleaning up their own acts. I wonder if Tesla's sum contribution is net negative when viewed from this perspective.

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#27

Post by 7e »

slg wrote: post #21
rgrove wrote: post #6

The article claims Tesla is incorrect when they say that "the average ICE vehicle gets around 22 MPG", and counters with EPA stats showing that the average fuel economy of all vehicles in the US is 24.9 MPG. But these aren't the same thing. The set "all vehicles in the US" contains both ICE vehicles _and_ hybrid/battery-powered EVs. But Tesla is explicitly only talking about ICE vehicles, and Tesla doesn't specifical…

>but The Drive's counter-argument makes an apples vs. oranges comparison. I will go one step further, The Drive's number is just straight dishonest. It lists that number as "the average fuel economy of all vehicles in the US hit 24.9 MPG in 2017". If you click through to the EPA report it list that 24.9 number as for "all new vehicles". It also says the number was 23.6 in 2012. The average car on the road is roughly…

It's fair to compare Tesla's new cars with others' new cars. That's the benchmark. If someone didn't buy a Tesla, they would have bought another type of new car (though probably a new hybrid or plug in hybrid, which have even higher average MPG). Tesla is disingenuous here.

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#28

Post by zaroth »

Written by Ed Niedermeyer of “Tesla Death Watch” fame. This guy has been feuding with Tesla since 2008, and you can’t miss the malice when reading TFA.

This guy can’t get over the fact that Tesla hasn’t failed. Makes me wonder how much he lost shorting the stock.

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#29

Post by derkster »

Tesla has almost highhandedly kept the public interested in electric cars. By becoming a viable car company, there's been huge amounts of money put into research from their competitors alone. I don't think it's good for them to over exaggerate their personal impact, but looking at the overall scale of what they have done.... I don't care that their marketing team went overboard on something I wouldn't have read anyway. We all know what Tesla has done laid the groundwork for some very important work that otherwise wouldn't have a footing.

Re: Fact Checking Tesla's “Impact Report”

#30

Post by [deleted] »

robertAngst wrote: post #13
bearcobra wrote: post #4

I really like Telsa's mission, but stuff like this is why they get a bad rap. I don't understand why they try to oversell everything. You've got a good product and are making a positive impact, don't squander it by making claims that can't be backed up.

> You've got a good product They have a product their buyers like, but the car doesnt have buttons or a center console. "Good" is in the eye of the beholder. Tesla has a weird situation that despite a product that breaks often and doesn't have niceties, their customers have a high satisfaction.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN